Common sense ain't that common after all

I saw something strange a couple of evenings ago, on my way home from work - a large crowd gathered at a corner, spilling onto the road and holding up traffic...and flashlights going off at random! I didn't get to see what was happening, though, coz we just zoomed the other way.
The madness came to light in the next day's headlines.....they were bringing down "unauthorized" billboards :I Tell me, how does a 70x 30 feet billboard stare down at you for years without proper authorization? And did a whole bunch of people have an "aha!!" moment when they realised there were 10,000 such cases?
Of course, the icing on the cake is when those humongous political cutouts and makeshift billboards go up...logic takes a backseat and even existing bilboards are blocked off. I've experienced this frustration firsthand when our 4 lakh a month billboard was blocked off to display one of the regular grinning faces of a political bigwig. Of course, living as we are in such a wonderful country, we were told to "adjust please, coz nothing could be done". How many times have i wished i could take an axe to them in the dead of the night!
Wonder how "authorized" these are ;)